Fromthe introduction:

Helene Schuberth argues that the financial crisis has laid bare the vast distributional consequences of financial governance arrangements. One of the characteristics of the current regulatory regime is the lack of women's representation in financial market governance. The under-representation of women is all the more worrying as they are often disproportionately affected by financial crises. Yet, the recent financial crisis is generally perceived as being either neutral or disproportionately affecting men. Schuberth starts with the observation that financial crises involve a cycle of at least three stages contrary to traditional recessions: the financial and banking crisis, the crisis in the real economy and, finally, the public debt crisis. She takes a broader perspective on gender implications of financial crises and analyses those for each of the three stages. Schuberth argues that in particular stage three of the crisis - the public debt crisis and its distributional consequences - will most likely exert a significant negative impact on women. But unfortunately, Schuberth observes, few governments have made conscious efforts to use a gender perspective in designing their stimulus packages. Moreover, even when leaving aside crisis events, financial governance arrangements have a decisive gender-specific impact.